Step right up, ladies and gentlemen. This is a battle of giants, a showdown for the ages, a rumble to remember. You don’t often see such a sparring of two worthy adversaries like this.

On the right you have the 1969 Buick Electra 225.

Spanning 126.2″ between its hubs, this Buick is the top of the Electra fleet. With a 360 horsepower, 430 cubic inch V8, she’s sure to light a fire when called upon.

Can’t you see yourself basking in the sun, driving down the highway, surrounded with the richness of this interior? 8,300 people realized they couldn’t live without doing so.

Having a hood ornament bravely leading the way is always a fantastic way to give a man (or woman) a little extra zip in their day.

On the left we have a formidable challenger, a competitor whose sheer vitality and voracity is often overlooked. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the 1969 Mercury Marquis.

Don’t let that soft baby blue color deceive you. This Marquis is packing a 320 horsepower, 429 cubic inch V8 – or it could be optioned up to 360 horsepower. While this Marquis does tip the scales at 50 pounds more than the Buick, that is only a few gallons of fuel difference – not enough to make either sweat with worry.

Understatement is the forte of this Mercury, produced at a time when understatement and subtlety were in high fashion. 2,300 intuitive people recognized the discreet vibes of this Mercury, choosing to blissfully cruise in a Mercury for their perpetual summer.

There’s just something about the understatement of the Buick. My father may have loved his 69 merc, but to my milennial eyes, the Buick has a better face, one of the best sweepspears of any year, and looks better leaving.

Eric VanBuren is going to have trouble on this one. And so do I. The Buick’s lines look really right on the convertible, and the 69-70 Electra is the last one that has both the size and quality to make it a contender as a legitimate no-excuses mega-cruiser.

But the Mercury Marquis really hit a home run in 1969-70 too, and this may be my favorite Marquis of all of them. This is one of the very few times when a Mercury could match up against a Buick with a straight face. There used to be an old guy in my neighborhood who had one of these in deep maroon, and it was a beautiful car.

I call it a draw. Edit – No, I have to pick the Mercury if it’s for me. As nice as the Buick is, GM stuff of that era just doesn’t hit the pleasure centers of my brain the way the Mercury would. My first car was a 67 Galaxie 500 convertible, so the Mercury is more like home to me.

It is not easy but I have to say Buick, skirts and fins for the win. No the fins are not fins in the traditional sense but when lined up next to the LeSabre and Wildcat from 1969 I can’t not see them as fins.

It is an interesting view of the Buick and Merc from the rear. A lot of similarities that I hadn’t put together until seeing them side by side.

While that 50’s Buick is most certainly wall art, I think the T and the Capri are actually normal-sized cars, it just *looks* like they’re set into the wall. If you look closely you can see back tires on both.

Ewe, I am not a fan of either. I like the earlier and later deuce and a quarters but the ones with the loop bumper just don’t do it for me. The Merc is also pretty ugly in the front, though I really like the rear with the full width tail lights. Can I get a ’69 Bonneville vert instead of one of these?

Handily the Buick for me (but, I don’t think the standup hood ornament is correct). Buick styling was hard to beat for a big car from about ’65 through 1976.

The Mercury has a very handsome front clip (those are open headlight cover doors for those that don’t know). But, after the front clip, I’ve always found the body to be sort of “meh”, and the pictures don’t capture the sort of odd concave rear end, both side to side, and top to bottom.

The Buick was likely the better handler of the two, and these were the years when GM really had its act together.

To answer the old question, “Wouldn’t you really rather have a Buick?”, I’d have to answer with a resounding yes.

At the front the Mercury, when the headlight “doors” are closed looks like a fairly expensive car. But, the Buick shades it (in the side view) with those discreet fender skirts. To me, those skirts give the Buick a “mature” look, while the Mercury (from the side) looks almost youthful. In the rear views the Buick barely shades the Mercury. It might have been a closer call if the Buick had been wearing the lighter shade of blue.

The Maurader also incorporated a unique rear quarter panel that had fake vent details and incorporated fender skirts. One is pictured among the comments. The rear quarter really changes the side look of the car.

Edit: you posted it!

roger628

Posted June 9, 2015 at 12:51 AM

I forgot about that. I suppose they could have done it by hanging those quarters on the Galaxie convertible shell. I can why they didn’t, convert sales were way down and another unique shell would have been un-economic.

I can’t be objective, ’cause I took my driver’s test in Dad’s full-size ’69 Mercury. It’s the only vehicle I ever topped out (indicated 120, so who knows) and the one I borrowed as I started my dating years (big bench seats).

In the name of fairness, I’m filing a protest. I demand that the Merc be equipped with Kelsey-Hayes Mag-Stars (a factory option) instead of those hideous ’66 Galaxie wheel covers. That would even-up the wheel deficit against the lovely Buick Road-Wheels.
And will someone please fix the vacuum lines to the lights on the Merc?
While I respect the Buick, I have a long-time nostalgic attachment to the blue oval, as others have opined previously. Make mine the Merc.

As they stand, in convertible format, I have to give the nod to the Buick. The shape just looks better in droptop form, and in general, the ’69 Electra was a looker. That trim sweep was instrumental in giving a sense of motion and interest to the fundamental squareness of the car. I like the interior better too.

If we were comparing hardtops, I think the result would be different. A ’69 Marauder X-100 with the tunnel roof, blackout deck and mags is pretty close to full-size coupe perfection for me. Love the hidden lamps too–they’re just not quite enough on their own to outdo the Buick in this particular battle!

Both nice cars but comparing these to each other the Buick has a clear advantage in that it has the factory wheels vs. the Mercury with hubcaps. Those wheels were sharp and always gave Buicks a classy look. The headlight doors on the Mercury were usually stuck open when they got older. The ignition on the Mercury looks like an after thought in response to the locking steering column mandate.

I had never noticed that ignition housing on these. Ford waited until the last minute to add the column lock, which I do not believe was mandated before 1-1-70. I know that the 69 Ford mounted the key way down low in the dash. But the Ford dash was made in very high volumes and could justify a redesign. Did Ford design the low-volume 69-70 Mercury dash without a place for a key knowing that the rule was coming? That would be my guess.

Oh boy.. This is a toughie.
I like the looks and the engine in the Buick but the interior of the Merc has a bit more character and that 429 isn’t anything to laugh at either.
I’d go Buick but by a thin margin.

I would also take the Buick Electra, I always thought the front end’s of the 1969-70 Mercury Marquis’s looked too bug eyed for me although I love the styling of the rest of the car, I wish they’ve kept on making the convertibles for the 1971-72 Mercury Marquis’s (which was IMO the best era of the Marquis’s), I always thought Mercury got it right with the styling of the whole 1971-72 Marquis’s, for the Buick Electra I’ve thought the best era was the 1969-70’s in the styling department.

I would really rather have the Buick. The Electra has the full console door panels like a Cadillac where the Mercury looks more like what was on the Galaxie. I also remember back in the day, the GM products handled better than a Ford product of course the Mercury was usually quieter.

My folks went through two ’71 Marquis, a sedan that was hit while parked, which was replaced with a coupe. That may be why I feel the 71s hit the sweet spot in overall styling, and Mercury missed a styling coup by discontinuing the convertible. Best case would have been a 71 vert, with the Marauder taillight treatment. Nonetheless, even the the ’69 seems leaner and more masculine in its styling compared to the Buick, though the Buick seems to show better attention to detail in the interior. In the end, though, the Thunder-Jet 429 takes no prisoners, delivering the decision to the lovely Merc.

These were taken at a spot along I-70 near Sweet Springs in Saline County. He’s always got a variety of iron there, such as the ’53 Kaiser Dragon (linked above) and the ’56 DeSoto parked next to the Mercury. There is another article with cars from there; I think I called it “Pitstop along I-70” or something similar to that.

It’s the Mercury for me. I just can’t warm to the face of the ’69 Buick, though I’ll admit the body certainly has its charms. But the Mercury just looks more integrated (or would if the lights were fixed), fresher, more seventies; somehow it looks a generation newer than the same-year’s Buick.

I have to say I like both, I am not a big Mercury fan but I really like the face of the 1969-70 models! I also like the interior styling of the Mercury.

The Electra 225 shouldn’t have those wheels as they were still only available as a factory option on the Wildcat and Riviera only in 1969. In 1970 they were offered on the LeSabre (with the same style center caps as the 1966-70 Wildcat/Riviera models but now featuring a Buick tri-shield emblem). They were still not offered on the Electra 225 in 1970 but if someone wanted, they could have ordered chrome plated wheels along with LeSabre center caps and fit them on an Electra 225.
But the wheels currently installed on this Electra look like those used in 1971 and later which lack 1/2″ of offset to fit correctly a pre-1971 model (the center caps are also for 1971 or newer models and wouldn’t fit on the 1966-70 wheels). If that car had the optional disc brakes, there’s no way these wheels would fit at the front as they’d rub on the 4 piston calipers so 1967 1/2-1970 wheels would be required. They do fit on cars with drum brakes but they get pretty close to the brake fins too and the tires are more likely to rub on the frame or on the inner fenders when turning.

Also the stand-up hood ornament was used in 1965-66 on the Electra 225 but not until 1975 after that. This one is a simpler hood ornament from a 1980’s or 1990’s model.

It IS a toughie on these. I would have to go with the Merc, based on personal experience with a ’70 Marquis Brougham I owned in the later ’70s. I also agree on the fact the Buick ornament has to be an add-on, and that the 429 was a really nice engine. My ’70 really started running sweetly at about 70, but would also burn rubber for a half-block if you stood on it hard. Mileage? Around 14-15 highway.